Page 101 of Bone Year

“It’s brutal,” she continues. “The patient will scream. You have to keep going anyway. Ugly scars are better than death.”

This is what I signed up for. Death is everywhere at Ashwell. In the wards, in the lectures, in the way the professors talk about loss like it’s just another lesson to learn. People die here. Students die here. And if I make it through, if I become a Veilguard, I’ll spend the rest of my life watching people die and trying to stop it.

I wanted to make a difference, to be the person who stood between someone and the end, but no one tells you what it costs. No one tells you that every patient takes a piece of you with them, whether they live or not.

I can’t keep getting attached and caring so much. It’s going to destroy me.

But if I stop caring, what’s the point? What kind of healer saves lives without giving a damn about the people attached to them? Apparently the headmaster.

I don’t know how to find the balance. I don’t know if there is one.

Maybe that’s the real lesson Ashwell is trying to teach me. Not how to heal but how to survive the healing.

“Corrupted wounds are different.” Professor Rowan sets the pouch down. “Ash powder won’t work. The disease fights back, resists the seal, keeps spreading. You have to cut away the dead tissue first, down to clean flesh. If the corruption has reached the bloodstream, ash powder is useless. Your only options at that point are amputation or letting them die. A bone saw is priceless in the field. Any Veilguard will tell you that.”

My chest tightens.

“There are rumors of old techniques that could purify decay from within. Burn it out of the blood itself.” She exhales. “But that knowledge died with the older blood mages, so we work with what we have.”

A few students laugh nervously. Shouldn’t the headmaster have this kind of knowledge?

“Now let’s talk about twisted creature bites.” She pulls out a jar filled with something I don’t want to identify. “Glasswings and goreleeches are the smallest twisted creatures we’ve identified, and their bites inject a venom that slows healing. You flush the wound with saline and pack it with ash powder.”

I remember Professor Nestor describing glasswings in our second week, insectoid predators with translucent wings like fractured crystals. Their bodies refract light and current, making them nearly impossible to target. And when you do manage to kill one, they shatter explosively, sending shards in every direction. Half the injuries from a glasswing encounter aren’t from the creature itself but from standing too close when it dies. The tiny shards can penetrate the skin, even the eyes, and be just as bad if not worse than a bite.

Goreleeches are slug-like things that attach to open wounds and feed on blood and current simultaneously. They look like debris, like a clot or a piece of torn fabric, until you realize the wound is draining faster than it should. Professor Nestor said Veilguards are trained to check for them first in triage, because every second one stays attached is more blood and current lost.

“And crawler bites,” Professor Rowan continues, “their saliva carries corruption directly. A crawler bite that breaks the skin needs immediate amputation, or the necrosis will spread within hours, and the infection can make the victim themselves start to exhibit crawler tendencies.”

Hours between a bite and losing a limb. Hours between a wound and death.

This is what’s waiting for us out there, and we’re supposed to heal through all of it.

Professor Rowan picks up a bone saw from her table. The same kind I held. The same kind I froze with. “Sometimes amputation is the only way to save a life. Cut above the corruption, never through it. Tourniquet first, this is where you can use your serpent eidolons. They make excellent tourniquets and can smell the decay even under the flesh. Then you saw, second and cauterize third.”

She looks out at us with cold eyes, and I want to know what kind of battles this lady has seen.

“A healer who cannot amputate will watch patients die. It’s that simple. If you can’t stomach it, if you can’t make that cut when it matters, you don’t belong in the field. You’ll cost lives, including your own.”

I don’t know if she’s saying it intentionally to me or not. I sit there with my hands shaking in my lap, trying not to fall apart in front of everyone.

Class ends, and students file out around me.

I see Jace near the front of the room, gathering his things. He hasn’t looked at me once during the entire lecture. Hasn’t looked at me in days.

I can’t keep pretending we’re strangers when a week ago he was telling me he loved me.

I push through the crowd and catch him in the corridor outside. My hand closes around his arm before I can talk myself out of it.

“Jace, please, can we talk?”

He turns and looks through me like I’m not even there.

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“There’s everything to talk about.” I don’t let go of his arm. “What happened with Malric⁠—”

“I know what happened.” His voice is flat, empty. No anger, no hurt, nothing. “Malric was very detailed.”